Howard, who had been watching the plunging echo on the elevation screen, breathed a sigh of relief when he heard this order.
“Now change course fife degrees left; I say again, fife degrees left.”
Was five degrees enough? The azimuth meter said he was two hundred feet off to the right. But too large a correction would do more harm than good; it took time for an aircraft to respond, and more time for it to straighten out again. Only experience could give the controller that delicacy of touch that allowed him to judge whether ten degrees was too much, or five degrees too little.
Yes, the needle was swinging back toward zero—the aircraft was edging in to the line of the runway. He must be stopped well before he got there, to prevent overshooting to the left. I’ll wait until he gets within fifty feet, thought Alan, and straighten him out then. With any luck, he’ll be bang on by the time he’s responded.
But what about height? Alan’s eyes flickered toward the elevation meter. Getting a bit high again—time to do something about it…
“Increase rate of descent slightly. You have three miles to go. Now you are lined up with the runway. Change course three degrees right; I say again, three degrees right.”
That should hold him; it had darn well better—there would only be time for a couple more corrections.
“Maintain present rate of descent. Two miles to go. Now you are nicely lined up.”
That was a little premature, but it would be true in about ten seconds. But would it stay that way?
“One and a half miles to go.” My God, thought Alan, he’s coming in fast! Or is there something wrong with my sense of time? At moments like this, I always thought things seemed to happen slowly…
“One mile to go. Increase rate of descent slightly. You are getting a little high. Half a mile to go. The runway is slightly to your right. Go ahead and land visually.”
There was nothing more that he could do. Either the pilot had seen the runway and would be able to land or else he would have to climb away and bail out. The third possibility—that he had been talked into the ground—did not bear thinking about.
Alan felt utterly drained of strength. He slumped in the controller’s seat, staring at the now-motionless needles on the meter panel. He would never again be able to look at them with the detachment of the technician who was not required to act on their information.
Then he heard Howard’s voice call, as if from a great distance: “He’s down! We’ve lost the echo!”
Down, but where—and how? There was only one way to find out. Radar could not help them now.
Mac and Howard were already outside the truck, racing toward the runway. As Alan joined them in the pouring rain, he was acting more through reflex than reason. He was not even sure what he expected to see or hear: at best, the roar of engines overshooting the airfield; at worst, a column of smoke slowly ascending into the sodden sky.
What was upon them within seconds could never have been expected. It broke through the veil of rain that concealed the runway like a curtain. It was down, moving fast—but not too fast for safety. And ahead of it battering their deafened and incredulous ears, was a sound such as they had never heard before in all their lives. Instead of the familiar deep-throated roar of piston engines, there came a screaming banshee wail, like the voice of a million demons escaping from hell. It tore at their eardrums and set their teeth on edge, leaving them stunned yet at the same moment exhilarated by the sheer impact of overwhelming power, as the low, squat aircraft, half shrouded in flying spray, hurtled down the runway and disappeared once more into the mist, they felt the fiery breath of its passage lick across their faces. They had a clear view of it for perhaps two seconds, but the awesome shriek of its engines lasted for minutes, fading away into the distance and presently swooping down octave by octave as the spinning turbines idled to rest.
Oblivious to the pouring rain, even forgetful of what they had just achieved, Alan and his companions remained staring along the empty runway. In that moment they knew that the age of the propeller was coming to its end. The sound still echoing in their memories was the voice of the future.
18
It’s a poor show,” grumbled Alan, “that we can’t even see the ruddy kite we landed.” With Howard and Deveraux, he was walking away from the locked and guarded hangar that now housed the shrieking apparition of the previous night. Two service policemen with conspicuous holsters and unfriendly expressions were parading in front of the great steel doors, turning away all unauthorized visitors.
The events of yesterday already had a misty, dreamlike quality about them. At first, Alan had gone into a state of shock at the realization of what he had done—and of what might have happened had he been a little less lucky. But there was no need to dwell on that; he had made his gamble, and he had won.
How much he had won only time would show. Certainly he must have struck a resounding blow for GCD, and given its critics something to think about. As Deveraux remarked, rubbing his long fingers together with satisfaction, “Even if Bomber Command takes a dim view of us, the fighter boys will be on our side now they know we can land a jet!”
Alan felt like adding that he was not sure that he could do it again; but at least he would be prepared to try, and twenty-four hours ago that would have been inconceivable.
Something had happened to him during those hectic minutes in the control van. His view of himself had changed, and so had the attitude of his companions toward him. In the past, they had always treated him with friendly tolerance, but now they looked at him with both surprise and respect. The experience was very satisfactory.
“By the way,” said Deveraux, “I’ve put through your leave application, but I can only let you have a week. The Station Adj will have your warrants and ration cards ready first thing tomorrow.”
“Oh—thanks,” said Alan, almost absent-mindedly. A week was quite long enough, for the visit was one of duty as much as pleasure. Miss Hadley’s last letter had been unusually insistent, and had reported with some exasperation that the Captain had met with a slight accident. It was not the first time that had happened, and Alan could guess the cause. While in bed, his father would have a chance of sobering up, at least.
He felt ashamed of the thought, but it was no use ignoring facts. Yet what was he going to say to the Captain when he did get home? They had few subjects of conversation in common, and any mention of his work would have to wait until after the war. Even if the Official Secrets Act had not existed, the problem of communication would remain. Scarcely a single person he knew, among all the friends and acquaintances of his youth, could understand what he was doing now. As Schuster moved in a world beyond Alan’s knowledge, so he himself moved in a world that would have baffled his father.
Yet Captain Bishop was a highly intelligent man, with a good understanding of machinery. How often Alan had seen him watching the great connecting rods and crankshafts of the Channel Queen going through their leisurely, silken-smooth revolutions, while he discussed some technical point with the engineer! It was incredible, the gulf that separated the massive machines he had once admired so much from the equipment he was operating now. With the dawn of electronics, something new had come into the world—something for which the word “machine” was totally inadequate. For here were no gears and cranks and wheels; only silent, motionless lumps of glass and metal through which pulsed, at lightning speed, images too swift for human eyes, sounds too shrill for human ears.
“Hello,” said Deveraux. “That looks like S Sugar. The Prof must be back.”
They watched as the Anson swept down the runway and taxied over to “D” Flight. By the time they had arrived at the hut, Professor Schuster and Dr. Wendt were already hard at work, rapidly dumping their property in three separate heaps on the wooden floor.
“Oh, no!” said Alan, with sudden apprehension.
“Oh, yes,” answered Dr. Wendt. “I’m off to be the Wizard—the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This pile is secret waste—to be
burned by the Station Security Officer. The middle one is for the poor of the unit. The third we’re taking with us.”
The third pile was a very small one. More interesting was the second, which contained numerous cans of Spam and other monosyllabic American meat products, boxes of sugar, jars of jam, books—and an opened bottle of Scotch, already a third gone.
“My God,” said Howard, looking from the bottle to the two scientists, “you only got here five minutes ago.”
“We’d been saving this,” answered Schuster, “until they told us to start building the Mark II. I’m afraid we’ve had to jump the gun—but I don’t think it will be too long now.” He took Alan’s hand, and pumped it vigorously. “Thanks—Alan—we’ll get all the propaganda mileage we can out of your effort.”
“It was all luck,” mumbled Alan, somewhat embarrassed.
“The sort of luck that comes to people who deserve it—which is us,” said Wendt. Then he looked puzzled, “Which are us? Oh, the hell with it.”
“Anyway,” said Schuster, “I’ve a little present for you.” He reached into his flying jacket, and handed Alan an electric-shaver resistor. “Sorry it isn’t a new one,” he apologized. “I had to borrow it from a pal at TRE. It will last you until the war’s over.”
“Which,” said Dr. Wendt, “may be sooner than you think.” He caught a disapproving glance from Schuster and added hastily: “If you really want to know, we’re going back to MIT to build a rocket that will home on Hitler’s mustache. Our secret agents have got a clipping at last, and we know its resonant frequency.”
Nobody laughed; despite all the forced gaiety, the atmosphere of gloom was too intense. It had lightened just a little by the time the Scotch was finished; but it came down again with a bang when S Sugar made a final farewell pass along the runway, and climbed away into the clouds.
***
Now that he, too, was preparing to leave, Alan was quite anxious to get away. He had screwed himself up to face his family responsibilities, and had even begun to look on them as an interesting challenge. This self-confidence was something new to him; it remained to be seen how long it would last. Certainly it was with almost a jaunty step that he entered the Assistant Adjutant’s office and asked that pale young man for his travel documents.
His step was not quite so jaunty when he emerged a few minutes later. The Assistant Adj, on the other hand, was a good deal more cheerful. Like many other people on the station, he slightly resented the glamour that surrounded the GCD unit, the special treatment it was given, and the administrative complications it caused. Now he had an opportunity of getting a little of his own back. He did not wish Alan any personal harm—indeed, he liked him—but it gave him a rarely experienced sense of power to announce that all leaves had been canceled.
“Terribly sorry, old boy,” he said. “It’s a Group order—nothing to do with us. There’s a big defense flap coming up, and everybody on the station has to take part in it. No exceptions allowed.”
“We’ll see about that,” Alan muttered darkly, and went storming off, after delivering a sloppy salute. Grabbing his bicycle from the rack beside the Orderly Room, he headed out to the perimeter track in search of Deveraux. On occasions like this, Dev usually knew what strings to pull and what priorities and regulations, fictitious or otherwise, to invoke. So indignant was Alan, and so intent upon his own affairs, that he pedaled furiously under the low-slung wing of a parked Liberator about two seconds before its engines coughed into life. The shaken ground crew watched him depart into the distance completely unaware of how narrowly he had missed the huge blades as they started to turn.
By the time he had reached “D” Flight’s office, halfway around the airfield, he had cooled down considerably. The news had arrived there before him, and nobody else was particularly upset at being confined to camp. Alan was the only one who had planned to go on leave, and all the sympathy he got was expressed in the wry phrase “You’ve had it, chum.”
Even Deveraux, with the best will in the world, could think of no way out.
“It’s only forty-eight hours, after all,” he said. “If it was really urgent, you could put in for compassionate leave. But surely there’s nothing that couldn’t wait for two days?”
“I suppose so,” said Alan reluctantly. “But you know how it is, when you’ve got everything ready.”
“Cheer up, Bish,” chortled one of the pilots, clapping him on the shoulder. “Worse things happen in the RAF, even in peacetime. I’ve heard of blokes being recalled on the first morning of the honeymoon. On the way to the church, in fact.”
“Talking of passionate leaves,” said Dennis Collins, “have you heard about the airman who asked his CO for a forty-eight because his wife was going to have a baby?”
“No. What happened?”
“Well, when he came back, the CO said, ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ And the chap looked at him as if he were daft and answered: ‘don’t be silly, sir—it takes months.’”
Alan did not join in the general laughter; he did not believe in encouraging Dennis. Moreover, his thoughts were elsewhere. One of Benny Schwartz’s mottoes, which he was fond of bringing forth in moments of crisis, was “Co-operate with the inevitable.”
He couldn’t go home for two days, but at least he could spend this evening out of camp. And he was sure it would not be necessary to twist Howard’s arm too hard to get Olga Buckingham’s phone number.
19
Now why, Alan,” said Lucille, “did you leave in such a hurry? I was very angry with you.”
“The place was getting too crowded,” replied Alan a little testily. He had no wish to go into that; it reflected on his manhood in more ways than one. He was not sure what he would do if McGregor put in another unwelcome appearance, but this time he had safeguarded himself. As Mac’s superior officer, he had taken an unfair advantage of his NCO. Mac was now on duty, changing a magnetron that had shown signs of going soft. Alan knew just how long the job would take, even if everything went smoothly—which it probably wouldn’t.
It was a dirty trick to play, since the suspect tube would certainly have lasted for several more runs. But what was the point of being an officer if you couldn’t enjoy it now and then? And Alan was certainly enjoying it now.
Lucille’s body was small but perfect—and she knew exactly how to use it. For several minutes Alan was too busy to think about rivals or competitors, but presently a nagging worry entered his mind. He propped himself up on one arm and looked down into the shadows. All he could see of Lucille’s face, in this delightful dimness, was the faint glitter of her eyes staring up into his. Any emotion they held failed to bridge the few inches of darkness between them.
“Tell me, Lucille,” he said thoughtfully, stroking her long flaxen hair. “Do you like Sergeant McGregor?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about him.”
Alan needed no light to see the little pout of annoyance on her face; the words conveyed it perfectly.
“I was just wondering,” said Alan, and lapsed into silence.
Lucille sighed; she had been through all this so many times before. These immature boys (after all, she was two years older than Alan by the calendar—and at least twenty years older in terms of experience) soon became possessive and demanding. They behaved as if you belonged to them; and Lucille had no intention of belonging to anyone.
She had no illusions about romantic love. Insofar as she had any goals, they were pleasure and security—not necessarily in that order. Lucille had spent most of her life in a rapidly disintegrating Europe, had known air raids, hunger, and Nazi occupation. She would be quite content, she often told herself, to settle down as the respectable, thoroughly married wife of some solid citizen in a French provincial town where nothing ever happened.
A good many minutes later, Alan made a circuitous return to the subject. He was not sure that he wanted to know the answer, but he hated to be left in suspense.
“I suppose you know quite a
few of the chaps from the station,” he said, with all the disinterest he could muster.
“Oh, thousands,” answered Lucille. “Of course, I can’t remember them all.”
Serves you right, Alan told himself.
“You’re a little liar,” he answered, only half playfully. “Ouch! That hurt!”
“It was supposed to,” said Lucille sweetly, retracting her claws. “But let’s not quarrel.”
“I wasn’t quarreling. When can I see you again? It will have to be the week after next. I’ve got seven days’ leave corning up.”
Lucille mentally flicked the pages of her diary, but it was difficult to make plans that far ahead.
“I’ll send you a message,” she said.
“How?” Alan asked.
“Umm—no, not by Mac—oh, through Howard, or maybe Dennis.”
“Dennis who?” growled Alan, with a horrid suspicion, Lucille, who could detect emotional nuances a mile away, knew at once that she had hit a sensitive spot.
“Why, Dennis Collins, of course. He’s in your Flight, isn’t he? I think he’s cute,” she added, with quite unnecessary emphasis.
The explosion she had hoped for did not materialize. Instead, Alan lay for a moment muttering like a partly extinct volcano, which, indeed, he now resembled in several respects. Then he snorted: “That stuck-up twerp! What can you see—”
Perhaps fortunately, he was interrupted by a discreet knock on the door.
“Come in,” called Lucille. Alan, feeling slightly sheepish—though far less so than he would have believed possible a few days ago—retreated under the counterpane as the lights went on and Joan advanced toward the bed behind a loaded tray.
“I’ve brought the things you asked for, Miss Lucille,” she said, without looking at Alan.
“Put it down there,” ordered Lucille. She turned to Alan and shook him briskly. “It’s a long ride back to camp,” she said, “and it’s nearly freezing outside. Stop sulking and eat this, like a good boy.”